


Sweet Child of Thine

by caelenath



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers S.P.D.
Genre: Children, Gen, Kid Fic, Kidnapping, Pre-Canon, Villain PoV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:55:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25536934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caelenath/pseuds/caelenath
Summary: Mirloc only agreed to the job as a way to repay an old favor, but what sounded like easy work brings more surprises than he could have ever guessed when the target turns out to be a small boy with an extraordinary power.
Kudos: 7





	1. the child

**Jay**

The frantic call from Madelaine came on top of a frantic day. Separate attacks at different ends of the city had forced the team to split up, Jay's morpher experienced a glitch that Kat would never admit to, and Jay still wasn't used to outranking Nate, which Nate found hilarious and Jay found annoyingly stressful.

He had actually missed his wife's first call, and the fact that she would call at all, never mind twice, was alarming in itself. She was good about not contacting him while he was on duty unless it was an emergency.

Today it was an emergency.

"I can't find Sky!" she cried as soon as Jay answered the phone. Her panicked tone combined with their son's name felt like a shot right to his heart, which still hadn't settled down yet from the battle and the rush of Power he had just come out of.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"At home. I put him down for a nap a few hours ago and he's usually up by now, so I went to check on him and he wasn't there. I've searched the entire house, every closet, drawer, cabinet, under the beds—I looked outside too. All the doors were locked, so I don't think he could've gotten out, but he isn't anywhere and I don't know what else to do!"

"It's okay," Jay said even though it was anything but. "It's going to be okay. We'll find him. Have you called the police yet?" It felt strange to ask because he was and was not the police. SPD served a similar function to the PD and their responsibilities did overlap, but missing persons generally wasn't in SPD's jurisdiction, and certainly wasn't within a Ranger's. But on the other hand, he and Nate were still figuring out the duties of their relatively nascent team within the wider SPD schema.

But on the other hand, the missing person was his son.

"I called them before I called you," Madelaine said. "They're sending someone over now."

"Good. I'll put an alert out on our networks too, and then I'm coming home. Oh, and I'll talk to Dr. Roberts on the way out."

"Dr. Roberts? Why?"

"In case Sky's special abilities might be relevant somehow. What if this is a new one?"

He could hear the frown in Madelaine's voice when she answered. "What, to just disappear? That doesn't seem likely."

Jay didn't think so either, but then, how many parents even had to consider the possibility? Sky had been born with the ability to create forcefields, the result of Madelaine's exposure to chemical enhancers while working on SPD's Morpher project, and while it was the only power they were aware of in Sky so far, who could say the genetic effects would end there? There was no precedent for someone like their son, who was only three, and barely at that. His birthday had been just weeks ago.

"Jay." Madelaine's voice dropped to a frightened whisper. "What if someone took him for his powers?"

That was an even more terrifying prospect, but if Jay let himself get paralyzed by all the what-ifs now, he would never move from where he was.

"We'll find him, Mads, I promise. I'll be home as soon as I can."

"Please hurry."

* * *

**Mirloc**

The boy had an angry red mark on his head that hadn't been there before. No doubt he had gained it by running into one of the infinite reflective surfaces in Mirloc's mirror dimension, where Mirloc had deposited him for a few minutes in order to steal him away from his home. Grown creatures became easily disoriented in that place, smashing headlong into themselves multiple times before learning to be wiser in their movements, so never mind a human youngling of three years. The boy was a mere babe by any galactic measure, including that of his own species.

While Mirloc had expected such fragility in a human child, he was admittedly taken aback by how loud and expressive he was also. The boy was only as tall as Mirloc's knee, but the noise he produced filled the entire house. His bright cherub's mouth was open wide as he wailed long and woefully, a sound sustained by more air and force than could have possibly fit in that small body.

The noise should have grated on Mirloc's nerves within the first fifteen seconds, but the mercenary had not gained his reputation or skill by giving into emotions so easily. He distanced his mind from the child's cries, prodigious as they were, and considered what might quiet him. A threat could work, but it could also just as easily have the opposite effect. Mirloc knew nothing of the minds of human children and what capacity they had for reasoning, but he knew how to read the state of others, usually foes, and he surmised that a threat would not only be insufficiently understood, but also, needless to say, unwelcome.

That left the option of coddling.

Mirloc carefully lowered himself to one knee so that he might be some measure less frightening (imagine that!). It had started to become bothersome anyway to have to look nearly straight down at his young charge. At first the boy didn't notice; his eyes were squeezed tightly shut in his fury, but the catch in his breath suggested he was wearing down. So Mirloc waited and the cries eventually subsided into wheezing gasps and then into nothing at all. The boy finally looked at the face of his captor, and when he did, Mirloc felt his vexation give way, like winter's frost beneath a spring sun, to something else he refused to name.

The child's eyes were as blue as day and as dewy as wet flowers.

Suddenly the wisdom of this endeavor, hastily agreed to as repayment of an old debt, seemed as lost as this innocence would be if Mirloc kept to the agreed course.

"If you are good," the mercenary said, and the slither of his voice sent the boy into a stunned quiet, "maybe you can go home again."


	2. zero night

Two PD officers were at the house when Jay arrived. One prowled around the perimeter while the other sat inside with Madelaine. As soon as Jay walked in, Madelaine jumped up and rushed straight into his arms.

"Gene has the entire force on alert," she said, cleaving to him as tightly as he held her. "And he's stopping by later unless we give him a good enough reason not to."

Jay wasn't inclined to give him one. New Tech City's police chief was a good friend of the family and Jay wanted the chance to thank him personally for throwing the full weight of the department into the search. "All of SPD's on alert too."

"Is there someone trying to get back at you? Someone who might be involved in this?"

"No," he reassured her quickly. "At least, no one we know of. I promise I don't have any mortal enemies I'm hiding." He gave his wife another squeeze, then asked, "Can you show me what happened?"

Madelaine spared a look for the officer still sitting at the table, who said it was fine and busied himself with his notes, before taking Jay's hand firmly in hers and leading him up the stairs to Sky's room. She stopped in the doorway, however, as if she were afraid to go in.

"We got home from his swim class around three and I put him down pretty much right away because he was tired. Of course he fought it for a while before finally knocking out. Around five-thirty, I pulled out a snack for him, then started making dinner, figuring he would be up any minute and hungry. When I didn't hear a peep, I came up to check on him and he wasn't here. I looked in all the rooms, then in all the closets, thinking maybe he was hiding even though he's never done that before. I started getting scared when I realized I didn't hear any sound at all, no muffled scrapes or giggles, not even him _breathing_. That's when I really started turning everything over. I even looked in the laundry hampers and the washing machine. Both the front and back doors were locked, but even if he'd gotten outside, he wouldn't just run off."

Madelaine pressed a fist to her mouth as if trying to stop the rush of words, and Jay rubbed her shoulder soothingly. He looked around the room, trying to spot anything that seemed out of place even as he wondered at the same time whether he'd be able to tell if something was. He generally took for granted that anything in a three-year-old's room wouldn't be in the same place twice.

Against the far wall, in direct view of the door, was Sky's toddler bed with the solar system-print bedclothes he loved. Extra pillows and blankets were piled on the floor beside it because despite the railing guarding two-thirds of its length, Sky still somehow managed to roll out of bed sometimes when he slept.

"Did you move Sky's blankets?" Jay asked.

"No." Madelaine quickly glanced at the bed, then back at him worriedly. "Did I miss something?"

He wasn't sure. Keeping hold of his wife's hand like she'd done earlier, he went for a closer look. The space-themed blanket, covered with the same smiling planets and suns as the bedsheets, was spread over the lower half of the mattress as if there were still a child there to keep warm. Normally it got kicked into the corner or onto the floor not long after Sky fell asleep.

It really did seem like his son had simply vanished into thin air, and the thought sent an icy chill down Jay's spine.

* * *

The boy was clearly capable of communicating, but he had an utterly unique language filled with muddled or nonsensical words that Mirloc could not comprehend. The child nearly soiled himself before he figured out "potty" was a word for eliminating waste. During that harrowing endeavor to the washroom, Mirloc made an interesting discovery—a thin belt around the boy's middle that he had initially dismissed as part of his clothing. On closer inspection, he realized it was a shielding device, a sophisticated one that was light and sturdy but seemingly inactive. The fastening mechanism, in contrast, was a simple one that even an idiot—or a child—could unlock. What good was such a thing if it could be so easily removed?

"Boy." Mirloc gestured at the belt. "Why do you have this?"

The child looked confused. "I have to. When I sleeping."

"Why?"

"So I safe."

"Safe from what?"

"Falling things."

Mirloc wondered if this was another one of the child's lingual eccentricities. "What sorts of things?" The boy shrugged as if such details were unimportant. "If you do not tell me, you cannot go home."

Blue eyes widened and that little bow mouth quivered as the boy spoke. "Things in my room." He could not pronounce the letter 'r' properly.

The look on his face was as much fear as it was a plea, and Mirloc reconsidered his earlier thought. Perhaps this was not a lingual eccentricity, but a deficiency. The child was afraid because he did not know how to answer.

"Why do they fall?" Mirloc asked more patiently.

The boy held up an arm and Mirloc was startled when a rippling blue energy field sprang to life from his fist to his elbow. Immediately the device around the boy's waist activated and the field dispersed as quickly as it had appeared.

The shielding device was not for keeping things out, the mercenary realized. It was meant to keep something in.

When he first agreed to this job, he had only a name and an assurance from his old acquaintance that it would be short work, a quick nab and dash that should be no trouble for a creature with his peculiar talent. Then he discovered the name belonged to a very small boy whose father was a Ranger, and Mirloc figured the motive must have had something to do with that. It was dishonorable work at best, cowardice at worst, to exact one's grievances using a baby instead of facing the aggrieving party directly.

Now, however, he wasn't so sure the boy's father had anything to do with it at all.

* * *

Jay awoke in the middle of the night alone. He and Madelaine had eventually drifted off separately on the couch after puttering around downstairs uselessly, too afraid to go to bed because then morning would come too soon. They couldn't bring themselves to concede the end of the day with their son still missing, but exhaustion set in and did it for them anyway.

What Jay had really wanted to do was hit the streets, follow every possible lead no matter how tenuous, and if those were lacking, he would physically comb the city, block by block, inch by inch, as many times as it took to bring Sky home. Neither plan was even remotely practical, but at least he would be doing _something_. The longer he sat here idle, the more suffocating the walls of his own house felt.

But he'd stayed because leaving Madelaine alone right now would have been horribly selfish. Plus, the other Rangers had already set up a 24-hour rotation in which two of them would be actively working on the search at any given time. Nate and Carmen had the current shift, and the morning one had been reserved for Jay because Nate knew that was the only thing he'd be doing come daybreak anyway.

Nate hadn't mentioned Cruger at all, which Jay took to mean the commander hadn't exactly approved of this diversion of the Rangers, but even if he'd explicitly forbade it, Jay knew his team would not have done anything less. For the ten thousandth time, he felt more grateful than he could ever say for whatever forces had brought his team together.

Jay staggered wearily off the couch and went in search of his wife. He found her in Sky's room, asleep beside the little bed, her head pillowed on the mattress and Sky's blanket gathered to her face. Despite how uncomfortable she looked, he hesitated to disturb her. This might be the only respite she'd had in hours, and the only peace she would know until their son was found.

He crept quietly across the room, thinking he might just lay down on the floor beside her, but when he knelt, he discovered she wasn't as asleep as he'd supposed. Her eyes opened and looked at him, red-rimmed and tired.

"He's never been away from us at night before," she murmured, as much to the blanket as to him. "Not once since he was born. Every time I looked, he was right here where he belonged. He was supposed to be safe here." She gripped the blanket harder. "What child isn't safe in their own bed?"

Jay reached for her hand and wrapped his fingers around hers to ease their wringing.

"I'm going out there," he said, which he honestly hadn't planned, but now seemed inevitable. Maybe he didn't know where Sky was, but their house was the one place his son definitely was not, and so he didn't belong there either. Wherever he went in the night, he would be closer to Sky no matter what.

Madelaine nodded and sat up. She pulled him closer, slid her fingers into his hair, and kissed him hard. She always thought Sky looked just like him even though their son had yet to grow out of his baby blondness.

"I know," she whispered.


	3. twenty-four hours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: contains brief, coarse language.

Mirloc thought the boy had slept soundly enough, but when he awoke, he was ravenous, malcontent, and oozing blood from a sore on his elbow. With no provisions on hand, Mirloc had simply sent the child to bed the night before in the only room in the house that had a bed. Now the child was whining of hunger as he scratched at the reddened skin in the crook of his arm. He had several such angry patches in various folds of skin on his body—behind his knees, on his neck, and on his wrists. Only the one was bleeding at the moment, but if the fragility of humans was anything to go by, Mirloc thought even just the one might be problematic.

He had not been able to contact his acquaintance during the night and they were not due to meet until the next night, which meant that the mercenary had to keep the child fed, unmaimed, and occupied until then.

The promise of food quieted the boy down, and Mirloc left him in the room with the bed, which had been denuded of all things a young child might accidentally hurt himself with. A forcefield device affixed above the doorway blocked any potential escape.

Mirloc had no idea what a human child required. During his hunt for provisions, he stopped to observe other humans with their brats in a public park. Very quickly, he noted that those with the youngest babes carried provisions with them, and he decided that availing himself to those was the most expedient way to obtain what he needed. He filched several containers of food, a set of clothing, and some colorful object intended for amusement, as well as a medical kit from an actual shop. How exhausting it must have been for humans to have to carry all those supplies everywhere for their young.

The first thing he took care of when he returned to the house were the rashes. He smeared ointment on them, covered them with fresh bandages, and told the boy sternly not to pick or pull at them. Then he handed over the containers of food.

"That's for babies," the boy said, looking at the jars balefully.

"This is all you get," Mirloc said. "You can eat what I give you or you can go hungry."

The child pouted, but there was worry in those blue eyes as he regarded the jars again. Mirloc opened the containers, handed the boy a spoon, then left him with his new provisions. A short time later, the sound of shattering glass brought the mercenary back to the room in a hurry. From the doorway, he saw one of the food jars shattered upon the floor.

"What have you done?" Mirloc demanded.

"I sorry," the child whimpered.

Mirloc stepped through the forcefield and the boy shrank back against the bed. Empty containers and dribbles of food littered the floor around him, but the broken jar lay nearly on the other side of the room, the only disruption in the layer of dust that coated the floorboards. Mirloc looked back at the boy suspiciously, but his wide eyes betrayed only fear. At least the child understood consequences.

Mirloc retrieved the spare clothing from the end of the bed and motioned for the boy to come closer. "Come here, boy. You are filthy." Smears of food clung to his little face and shirt.

The child resisted at first, but a glowering look from the mercenary cowed him into obedience. Mirloc changed the boy's shirt, then used the old one to clean his face and hastily sweep the mess on the floor under the bed. When he was done, the boy pointed at the doorway and said, "I can too."

The mercenary became suspicious again. "You can what?"

The boy tugged at the shielding device around his waist, which his new shirt didn't quite cover. "Off."

Mirloc didn't move. Was this a trick? Would the child somehow escape if the device was removed? Perhaps he did not know how to work the fastening mechanism after all. After a moment's deliberation, the mercenary decided not to risk it.

"No," he told the boy, and the little face crumpled.

"I want to go home," the child whined.

"You cannot."

"I want mommy and daddy."

"You are not being a very good boy."

The boy stomped a foot. "I want home!"

"Silence, child!"

"Home!" The boy began repeating it, his voice growing louder and shriller until he was screaming. Mirloc had to pacify the brat fast before somebody heard. He reached for the plates on his chest.

"Do you remember the place of mirrors?" he growled, and the menacing rumble finally shut the boy up. From the panicked look on his face, Mirloc knew he remembered the mirror dimension well. "If you yell again, I will send you back there. Do you want to go to the place of mirrors or stay here in this nice room?"

"Stay," the boy said quickly.

"Then behave yourself."

* * *

The commander intervened at noon, when he caught Jay and Nate arguing without actually disagreeing about anything. They were both dead tired, worried sick, and borderline dysfunctional, and not even a lecture from Mori could get them to settle down. Cruger, on the other hand, kept it simple: he would deactivate their access to everything in the Delta Base if they didn't go and get some rest. Nothing and no one could be helped with them in such a state, but the only thing that really pacified Jay was a check-in with Gene, who promised him that no stone in the city was being left unturned. The police chief also asked after Madelaine, who had stayed at the house today in case anyone—good or bad—tried to contact them there. Jay had a feeling she would be Gene's next call no matter what he said.

He and Nate decided to take their break in the common room, where they could be out of the way but easily found in case any news came through. The room was thankfully deserted, not unusual for the lunch hour when most personnel were down in the mess hall. By now, everyone on Base must have known what had happened and Jay didn't have the energy to deal with their sympathy or questions right now.

He and Nate sank down on opposite couches, where Nate immediately grabbed a pillow and lay down. Jay felt a stab of guilt as he realized his second-in-command had been up the entire night. After finding out that Jay had hit the streets long before daybreak, Nate had sent Carmen home and insisted on joining Jay instead. They'd been together ever since, coming back to Base when Fran took on the next shift. Cruger was allowing their 24-hour rotation, but had cut it down to one Ranger per shift.

"You should get some sleep," Jay told Nate when the other man just kept watching him sit there instead of closing his eyes.

"So should you."

"I did."

"Two to four a.m. doesn't count."

"It was one to four, I think."

"Bull. You have no fucking idea when you slept."

"Fine. It doesn't matter anyway."

"It will when you miss something because you're so fried. You're no use to anyone this way, especially not Sky."

The sound of his son's name brought another, more painful realization. "It's been almost twenty-four hours."

"What?"

"It's been almost twenty-four hours since Sky went missing." Jay's chest tightened as he said the words. "There's been no note, no ransom, nothing. We still have no idea what happened or who—"

He shut down his thoughts, hard and fast. It was too soon to start losing hope, too soon to start doubting. Patience, faith, and throwing everything he had in his fucking power to throw was going to see him through this.

"Get some rest, Jay," Nate said. "You're just too tired to see that we're gonna win this. Everything's going to be okay."


	4. power

In addition to being fragile, human children were also voracious, absurdly so for their size. Before the sun had even reached its peak in the sky, the boy was complaining of hunger again. Mirloc had another full day and then some before he was due to deliver the boy to his acquaintance, so he decided he had best procure a more substantial supply of provisions if he wished to survive that time with his sanity intact.

Leaving the boy locked in the room once more, the mercenary went out and found a market the size of a modest skyport, in which there were entire sections dedicated solely to sustaining the young. He studied the endless aisles of foodstuffs and supplies for a few incredulous minutes before deciding it was nigh on a miracle that humans didn't die of exhaustion before their pitiful offspring reached maturity.

He selected an assortment of items based on the children pictured in the labels—all smiling brats with similar expressive round eyes—as well as a book of pictures to keep the boy occupied. When he was content, he had proved to be an industrious sort, carefully studying every inch of his quarters that he could reach before learning how to amuse himself by throwing the colorful object Mirloc had stolen in the park at the forcefield in the door and watching it bounce off helter-skelter.

This was indeed what the boy was doing when Mirloc returned to the house. After inhaling more food, the child took an interest in the picture book and it wasn't long before he'd left a sticky finger mark on every page. When he reached the end, he began again, leafing through more slowly. His little pinch grip was tight, leaving a new crease in the paper with each turn. at one point, silent tears began dribbling down his face and Mirloc decided to investigate.

The boy looked up in alarm at Mirloc's approach, but the mercenary ignored his wet eyes and looked down at the book in his hands instead. On the page was a dark shape, literally just a large brown square with shifty eyes and two short legs, unusual nonsense even for a child.

"Does this picture frighten you?" Mirloc asked.

The boy shook his head. "This is Daddy's book," he said, pointing at the brown square. Another tear rolled down and he scrubbed his arm across his face with a sniffle, but after a moment, his weeping began in earnest.

A distraction was in order, but Mirloc had no interest in reading about an anthropomorphic shape the color of loam. However, if human children were like other types of children he had known, then any yarn would do.

"Would you like to hear a different story?" he asked.

* * *

The day went from too long to too short in an instant.

After a fruitless afternoon in the search for Sky, a lead finally came through in the evening, albeit a tenuous one. The manager of a superstore on the east side of town had filed a theft report with the PD after noticing a most unusual thief while reviewing the day's security footage. Gene had in turn shared the report with SPD immediately when he noticed the kinds of items that had been taken—baby food, cereal, cookies, a picture book, and some children's clothing.

Jay reviewed the footage with Nate and Mori in the command center. It showed a distinctly non-human character wandering through several aisles of the store before he began plucking items off the shelves. Each one he selected seemed to disappear into thin air before he moved on to the next. The three Rangers exchanged puzzled looks.

"Maybe he has a picky kid at home?" Nate mused when the perp paused in the cereal aisle to look up and down the literal wall of choices.

"Or a few?" said Mori. "The target age for those supplies ranges from zero to four or five. The cereal's kind of a tossup. My guess though? He doesn't have a clue what he's doing."

They continued watching as the perp went on to pick up some nonfood items, then entered an unoccupied aisle in the home décor section and vanished.

"Hey!" Jay slapped the control to pause the video. "Where'd he go?"

They reversed the video and re-watched the segment several times before Mori had the sensible idea to slow the playback speed. It took several tries and adjustments, but finally they were able to see that the creature hadn't vanished into thin air after all, but into one of the decorative mirrors on display.

Jay was vaguely aware of his teammates watching his reaction, but all he could think of was the mirror in Sky's room at home. It was part of an old dresser that held Sky's clothes and spare blankets. If this creature, whatever he was, had in fact taken Sky, was that mirror the way he had gotten in and out of the house unseen and unheard? What exactly happened to the things he made disappear that way?

Elsewhere in the Delta Base, Kat was running a facial match against SPD's vast databanks. So far nothing had come up, but the perp's image had been shared with all PD and SPD units anyway. If nothing else, he could be picked up on shoplifting charges.

As Jay watched him in the video though, troubled by the purple skin and sinister eyes, he wasn't sure whether or not to hope this was the person who had his son after all.

* * *

The boy awoke crying in the middle of the night, frightened by bad dreams and refusing to go back to sleep. Perhaps the mercenary's earlier stories of nebular serpents and walking shadow monsters had not been the best choice.

Mirloc went to the washroom to wet a cloth and wiped the day's grime off the boy's face along with his tears. The cold dampness made him shiver, but the gesture seemed to soothe him nonetheless. Mirloc then squeezed the cloth hard to wring a single droplet of water into his palm. It lit up with a golden light that matched the glow of the mercenary's eyes.

Curiosity trumped fear as the child crawled out from the safety of the bedclothes towards Mirloc's hand. The light from the droplet reflected in his widened eyes like twin candles, making them look almost as yellow as Mirloc's own.

"Is it magic?" he asked.

Few places in the universe had a word for what Mirloc could do, and Earth was not one of them. He said no and braced himself for more questions, but they never came. Instead, the boy lifted his own hand and that mysterious blue energy he had demonstrated the day before flashed briefly around his small digits.

"I can too," he said.

Mirloc glanced at the shielding device around the boy's waist and wondered if this might be the time to solve that particular mystery. "Will you show me if I remove this?" He tapped the device with a finger.

The boy nodded.

Hoping he wouldn't regret his decision, Mirloc unfastened the device and laid it aside. The boy made a fist and this time the blue light rippled and pulsed uninhibited around his entire forearm. He moved it in a clumsy circle to create a translucent blue wall that hung in midair like nebulae out in space. His young eyes were narrowed in un-childlike concentration.

Mirloc cautiously stretched a hand towards the glowing wall and was astonished to feel neither heat nor the potent charge of electricity emanating from it. Then he remembered what the boy had said about the forcefield in the doorway.

The child was a living weapon.

The mercenary stopped just short of touching the blue energy—because that would have been foolhardy—and when he dropped his hand, so did the boy. The blue wall dissipated in an instant, gone like it had never been, and the child seemed unaffected by the effort.

"That is very good," Mirloc said. "You have a very special power."

"What yours?" the boy wanted to know.

"I can travel through reflective surfaces." From the child's blank stare, it was clear this explanation was beyond his comprehension, so Mirloc tried a different one. "Anywhere I can see my own face, no matter how small—" He gestured at the water droplet in his palm. "—I can use it to go anywhere I wish."

"Anywhere in the world?"

"Anywhere in the universe."

The boy's eyes widened. "How?" he demanded.

"How do you make your forcefields?"

"Science."

That was not an answer the mercenary had expected at all. "How do you know that?"

"Mommy says so."

Not his Ranger father, Mirloc noted.

"I want to go home," the child said, a whine creeping into his voice just as Mirloc was starting to find him tolerable, amusing even.

"Only if you behave," the mercenary reminded him. "If you like, I can tell you a story about my home."

The boy nodded eagerly, so Mirloc sifted through his memories for an appropriate one. Thus far, his life had involved far more stories of darkness than of light, but the latter were not forgotten even if it took him several moments to find his way back to them, back to the time before he began wandering the stars. Few knew—and most would not believe when they looked at him—that his life had begun in a place of light and of great beauty.

The memory he finally chose was older than this babe could ever fathom. It was of a place with three suns, shining walls, and heat so fierce, it scraped your insides to breathe it in. It was the last place Mirloc had known peace, and belonging, and the last time he had walked in light instead of dark.

As the mercenary recalled this fondest place, the child fell asleep and did not wake again until the sun had risen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The picture book that Mirloc steals for Sky featuring “a large brown square with shifty eyes and two short legs” is a real book. It’s called _Square_ by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen.


	5. destiny

The woman next door had sworn she'd heard a child crying inside the house, but had seen no one go in or come out in over six months, so she did what any sensible person would do—she told her daughter over a lunch date that the abandoned bungalow must be haunted, and planned to call somebody to see about mending the fence between the two properties sooner rather than later. The daughter fortunately happened to be a PD officer and immediately relayed her mother's observation to the people handling Sky's case.

So here Nate and Jay were, standing in front of the bungalow feeling hopeful but dreading at the same time what they'd find inside. The front yard was scrubby and rough, riddled with crab grass and dandelion stalks that showed the months of neglect more acutely than the house did. According to city records, the property was in foreclosure, so they hadn't bothered with a warrant. They prowled around the front windows before knocking on the door. There was no doorbell.

"SPD!"

There was no answer, not that they had really expected one. Jay squinted through the window, but everything inside remained dark and still. He knocked again, louder this time, and the ensuing silence was somehow more disappointing than before.

"Should we go in?" Nate asked.

Jay nodded. If there was any possibility a child was inside, abandoned, trapped, or otherwise endangered, they couldn't just walk away. Nate rattled the door handle a few times, and Jay thought he was going to try to wrench it. Instead, he took out a thin, flat card from his pocket and managed to jimmy the lock open just like in the movies, but the funny thing was, Nate looked as surprised as Jay felt. When Jay shot him an incredulous look, Nate just shrugged and put the card away.

_Don't ask_ , his expression said.

The door creaked as he pushed it open and cautiously stepped inside. The interior was dim, dusty, and claustrophobic thanks to low ceilings and oblique sunlight. An uncomfortably narrow doorway tucked right against the back right corner led into what looked like the kitchen. Somewhere in the house was the hum of something electronically powered. Jay exchanged a quick look with Nate and was about to announce their presence again when they heard muffled footsteps upstairs followed by a scraping against the floor. Jay's pulse immediately quickened.

"Sky!" he shouted.

The reply was immediate. "Daddy!"

That little voice that had been missing for too long sent relief and fear surging through Jay's veins, and he sprinted up the stairs like gravity didn't exist.

"Sky!"

Sky called out for him again and it was the only thing he was aware of as he hit the top of the staircase and kept running. He didn't notice the electronic hum from earlier growing louder nor the device affixed over the bedroom door—obvious in hindsight—until it was too late. He slammed full speed into the invisible barrier and went sprawling backwards hard, his vision flaring all white, then all black before slowly filling back in. His forehead throbbed painfully.

Nate was leaning over him, weapon ready in one hand while his other reached down to touch Jay's shoulder. "You okay?" he demanded.

"Yeah," Jay managed to gasp out with what little air hadn't been knocked out of him. He urgently motioned for Nate to keep moving without him. The other Ranger did as he was told, and by the time Jay got back on his feet, Nate had disabled the forcefield device and entered the room.

It was empty. Nate's weapon hung limply at his side.

"I'm sorry, Jay," he mumbled as Jay came to stand beside him. Together they stared at the old, sagging bed and the pile of twisted blankets on it that had clearly been tossed aside in a hurry. Empty baby food jars and a familiar picture book littered the floor, but the most disturbing sight of all was the small thin belt cast aside atop the bedclothes—Sky's protective shielding device. Kat had designed it for him when he was one and a half, after an accidental forcefield unleashed in his sleep had blown his crib apart.

Jay felt sluggish and disconnected, like he was fighting to move through a dream, as he stepped forward to pick it up. Sky's cries for him still rang in his ears.

They had been so close.

* * *

The child's fury began even before they escaped into the dusty window pane. To avoid anyone overhearing, Mirloc transported them to the woods beyond the city where they emerged from a bubbling brook beneath soaring trees in full summer flower. There had been no time to use his mirror dimension as an intermediary. As the boy's father raced up the stairs, Mirloc had simply snatched the boy up in his arms and taken them together that way through the glass.

They reached the woods not a moment too soon. The instant they appeared, a wave of blue energy repelled him and he half-dropped the child onto the mossy ground. He staggered back as the boy howled, wave after wave of blue light pulsing outward from his small body. These were stronger than the little phantom the boy had created the night before. These scraped back the moss at his feet clean and sent stones hurtling into tree trunks and the brook. Dust and detritus kicked up in an ever-widening ring around him with each successive wave. It was like watching a tiny cyclone rage right there on the forest floor.

Mirloc's acquaintance had not named a price or a purpose for this job, but Mirloc was beginning to think no price would have been adequate. Against his better judgment, he began wondering what this boy would be like in his prime, as a strong young man with an extraordinary power at his disposal. What mores would he follow? Who might attempt to tame him? If they failed, how far would that storm devastate?

It had been far too easy to rob his cradle, which meant his father, Ranger though he might be, was either useless or a fool. But here the child was, crying out for that father all the same.

_Your daddy doesn't love you enough_ , Mirloc was tempted to say. _Not only does he bind you, he can't even protect you properly._

The boy fell onto his rear in the dirt and continued to scream inconsolably, fists clenched until they were bloodless and his entire body shaking with the effort. His face was reddened as if his anguish burned him from the inside and he might burst at any moment.

The wretchedness was unbearable and Mirloc had half a mind to just walk away, but then he wondered for the first time whether the boy could actually hurt himself carrying on this way. Such tempestuous emotion and power, one with or without the other, rarely came without a price.

Mirloc carefully inched closer, mindful of the rocks and debris still flying about. He stopped when a twig scraped his shin and he stood there frowning deeply, uncertain of his next move. The glisten of tears on the boy's face gave him an idea and he turned to the brook instead. He scooped a handful of water in both hands and brought it over.

When the boy paused for breath, Mirloc quickly interjected, "I will let you see your daddy if you are quiet and look here. You must be careful not to spill it."

Once more, he found himself facing those round, dewy eyes, bluer than the sky above their heads. Had the boy been named for them? Did he choose the hue of his power?

Thankfully the glow around his arms faded sooner than his sniffles. When the ground finally stopped skittering, Mirloc knelt down and lowered his hands so that the boy could see his makeshift mirror. Set against his dark purple skin, it was not a bad one.

The water flared bright gold, and when the surface had sufficiently stilled, an image of the boy's father and his fellow Ranger appeared. The two were still searching the house and the image dimmed each time they moved out of sight of an adequate reflective surface.

"Daddy!" the boy cried.

"He cannot hear you this way," Mirloc said.

"I want my daddy," the boy said again, but this time it was a whimper rather than a scream.

"Tonight," Mirloc said. "I have a friend who wants to see your special power. After you meet him, I can bring you home to your daddy. But you must promise to be good and do what I tell you."

The boy didn't answer. Instead, he just mopped at his eyes and hiccupped, and Mirloc wondered if even he could tell by now an empty promise when he heard one. He was no longer interested in seeing his father, or in brewing another storm, or in anything at all. He simply sat there mewling in the dirt, tears still leaking, looking small and alone and miserable.

Mirloc released the water in his hands and wondered how he was to pass the day with such a sight picking at the pity in his heart. He could hide the boy in another safe house, but now that he was quiet, the atmosphere of the woods was something close to pleasant.

Remembering how fascinated the boy had been by stories of a desert world, the mercenary mused carefully, "My home had no forests like this."

For a moment, it seemed like the child would continue to ignore him. In the end, his curiosity allowed no such thing and he reluctantly asked, "No trees?" His failed pronunciation of the letter 'r' yet again made the question sound all the more innocent.

"Only small ones, more stick than tree."

The boy glanced at Mirloc's hands. "I can see?"

It was an astonishingly astute response. Did this youngling actually comprehend what Mirloc's power was, or was it merely a conjuring to him—magic as he had called it—of images as artificial as those in a picture book?

The realization that he truly no longer intended for his promise of reunion to be an empty one struck the mercenary hard. A child such as this had a greater destiny than to be subjugated by others. Perhaps it was not mere chance that had led Mirloc to intercede at the right time to prevent that very thing. If there was a thing he despised more than weakness, it was wasted potential.

The boy was still looking at his hands as if an image would appear on its own. Mirloc held them out and said, "Yes, you can see. Would you like to go there?"

The boy's eyes widened, and when he suddenly scrambled to his feet, Mirloc took that to mean assent. The child did not protest this time when he was picked up, and his sense of adventure secretly pleased the mercenary.

Mirloc stepped up to the edge of the brook, and for the first time in his long life, he did not traverse the universe alone.


End file.
